- Shakespeare produces words of Reason in his sonnets and plays, aware of the relativity of the magnitude of material things, all objects shrink and expand to serve the passions of the poet (cites some sonnets and the Tempest)

(c) philosophy

- a poet's aim is Beauty, a philosopher's aim is Truth

- but: the true philosopher and the true poet are one, and their common aim is beauty, which is truth, and truth, which is beauty

- practise of ideas, degrading nature and suggesting its dependence on spirit

- religion is from God, ethics from man

=> motion, poetry, physical and intellectual science, and religion educate human to see not only things, but to see them through to discover ideas which are from God ("Idealism sees the world in God.")

"Chapter VII: Spirit"

- one comprehensive use of Spirit: points to the Spirit, intermediates the universal Spirit

- nature as the visible state of God

- Spirit evokes questions: What is matter? Whence is it? Whereto?

- idealism denies existence of matter

- the highest truth is present to the soul of man

- spirit is present throughout nature, is one and not compound, and acts upon us through ourselves and not from without

- Spirit = the Supreme Being

- through the purification of your soul, you become creator yourself, because you gain access to the entire mind of the Creator

"Chapter VIII: Prospects"

- the highest reason is always the truest

- but: empirical science is apt to cloud the sight: minuteness in details is useless without relation between things and thoughts

- Aristotle: "Poetry comes nearer to vital truth than history."

- conclusion: both history and prophecy are needed

- the foundations of man are not in matter but in spirit, the element of spirit is eternity

- "A man is a god in ruins."

- "Man is the dwarf of himself."

- man was once dissolved by spirit, now man is deprived of his innocence and Instinct

- exceptions: actions of man with reason as well as understanding (e.g. miracles, history of Jesus, abolition of the Slave-trade etc.)

- discrepancy between the actual and the ideal force of man

- aim: restoring to the world original and eternal beauty by the redemption of the soul

- harmony: the world as we perceive it lacks unity because man is disunited with himself

- wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common

- nature is not fixed but fluid, spirit alters, moulds, makes it: the immobility or bruteness of nature is the absence of spirit

- every spirit builds itself a house, and beyond a house a world and beyond a heaven: the world exists for you, all that Adam had you have, too

=> build your own world and conform your life to the pure idea in your mind until evil is no more seen

Notes

- often paraphrases the Bible, philosophers (esp. German, connected with Romanticism and the Greek philosophers), and poets (T. S. Coleridge)

- cites verses of considerable length

- assumes the tone of a poet-prophet

- presents not rigidly Christian, but rather pantheistic beliefs (God is manifested in nature)